Grasping brutal and incremental BIM innovation through institutional logics

Construction is currently transforming from paper-based to information-driven. Several innovations contribute to its digitisation, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM impacts various bodies of the institutional environment, e.g. governmental structures, policy, enterprises, procurement systems, and industry consortia. Surprisingly, BIM is not newly-found, however it radically alters the way construction firms operate. The last decades, BIM concept gradually evolved from an industry-sponsored effort to share consistent information among low tiers of the supply chain, to multi-disciplinary collaboration across top tiers. However, as public bodies increasingly mandate BIM, firms have to radically – or brutally – innovate their businesses. This paper compares brutal and incremental BIM diffusion mechanisms. In North-Western Europe, BIM mandates for public procurement have recently been issued, while others are in preparation. Because various contextual and cultural aspects exist, this paper discusses BIM diffusion only in the United Kingdom – where it has been mandated since 2016 - and in the Nordic countries and Netherlands – where BIM is not mandatory. The paper draws upon BIM mandatory documents and reflects on scientific literature to explain the innovation mechanisms and outline implications for policy-makers in our increasingly globalised construction industry. Through the lens of institutional logics, this paper discusses how construction actors behave, influenced by macroscopic decisions and conditions. First, looking the degree of state involvement explains why BIM is currently not a mainstream practice in the United States, ten years after it was mandated in public procurement. Second, looking at how proactively countries have embraced past innovations, could predict the overall acceptance of BIM in the future. Third, not only quantitative and structural industry characteristics, but also qualitative relations between public and private institutions, are essential for understanding how innovation unfolds. The paper concludes with propositions for rethinking and rationalising BIM diffusion mechanisms across the supply chain for meaningful and resilient change.